A miser sold all that he had and bought a lump of gold, which he buried in a hole in the ground by the side of an old wall and went to look at daily. One of his workmen observed his frequent visits to the spot and decided to watch his movements. He soon discovered the secret of the hidden treasure, and digging down, came to the lump of gold, and stole it. The Miser, on his next visit, found the hole empty and began to tear his hair and to make loud lamentations. A neighbor, seeing him overcome with grief and learning the cause, said, "Pray do not grieve so; but go and take a stone, and place it in the hole, and fancy that the gold is still lying there. It will do you quite the same service; for when the gold was there, you had it not, as you did not make the slightest use of it."
Aesop
The difference is, that the buried gold of this rich Diogenes who was living like Huckleberry Finn, gave him a sicurity potentially life saving in case of a financial crisis like the one we are going through, while the stone could only give an illusion and was worthless in case of real need.
ReplyDeleteImplicit with the cunning suggestion of the neighbour was also the suggestion that the anxious miser should bury his head with eyes and brain.
Furthermore see Luke 19,11-27
Let´s take a look to what happened with the miser´s workman. Either he was a miser, too, burying the gold into the ground as well, or he gave up his contract of labour at once. In the first case we had two happy misers. In the second case, our miser knew where to getting back his lump of gold.
ReplyDeleteLet´s have a look on the neighbour. He could be in the advertising industry. His ability to putting an illusion into the miser´s head, comes to our attention. An advertising expert is used to sell stones pretended as gold. But do we really know someone in this industry living on the countryside (where you can dig large holes by the side of old walls into the ground) ? No, these people live in the up-to-date quarters of big cities. Who else after all, could be our neighbour? Certainly, it was a musical composer who couldn´t bear anymore those loud lamentations, horribly interfering his attempts of melody making.
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